Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 2 (1898).djvu/57

Rh some qualities. Particular Wasps seem to prefer particular Spiders, and in nearly all the nests I have examined there has been a marked preponderance of one species. The favourite species varies of course in different districts, but there seems further to be a certain amount of individual preference.

With regard to the other side of the picture, I have seen much fewer cases. The most daring Spiders that have come under my notice are the protectively coloured crab-like species which frequent flower-heads, and I have not unfrequently seen them engaged in sucking various small species of stinging Hymenoptera, which they seem almost always to seize by the neck between the head and thorax; but these Spiders themselves frequently fall a prey to the larger Mason-Wasps. Among the web-Spiders, I have seen Hymenoptera most often eaten by the curious little Sociable Spider, which lives in societies, forming a thickly felted nest varying in size from that of a cricket-ball to a man's head, and traversed throughout by intersecting galleries, being surrounded on all sides by an irregular and sometimes far-reaching snare. In this case, however, the Wasp is caught in the highly glutinous web during the day, and struggles on till sundown, when at last the Spiders emerge; three or four of them set on him, and with a quick bite here and a bite there soon despatch him in his tired state, and the body is then dragged off to the nest to be discussed; for these Spiders do not enshroud their victims. The Sociable Spiders feed principally on crepuscular beetles (Melelonthidæ for the most part), but I have found many different and unlooked-for insects in their webs, such as large Mylabridæ, migratory locusts, &c, all of which had been eaten.

In experiments I have made in putting Wasps into the webs of a species of Nephile, the Spider has either beat a hasty retreat to its lair or else promptly cut the intruder loose. Indeed, so far as my small experience goes, it certainly seems the exception for a web-Spider to attempt to make a meal off anything in the shape of a Wasp— (Salisbury, Mashunaland).